PART 2 WORKING AT THE CIA

After graduating with a Master’s Degree in mathematics from the University of Arkansas in 1967, I had my first opportunity to live outside the Ozarks. The choice was between NASA, putting a man on the moon in 1969 or working for the CIA in Washington, DC. Doing the James Bond thing.  James Bond was very big, so it made my decision easy. There has never been a Bond like Sean Connery. Goldfinger is one of my all time favorite movies. I remember watching the movie multiple times during final exam week. Today the Bond movies have no charisma. I generally don’t even see them unless they are shown on an airline or cable. Notification of acceptance for employment came in the form of a telegram. I remember when I received the notice of acceptance of employment the allowable transportation to Washington was by airplane, train, or privately owned vehicle. Reimbursement was for the lesser of mileage paid at 12 cents a mile for your vehicle or a minimum first-class accommodation on rail. I’d never been on a passenger train at that time. Later on I found out that due to airline hijackings that rail was the normal transportation from DC to Florida and Cape Canaveral.

In the sixties, making money had fallen out of favor. The financial expansion and growth following WWII continued in the fifties and then into the early sixties. The lifestyle of newfound wealth began meeting strong resistance from the youth. There was social revolution throughout the country. Race issues created tension in the cities with parts of many cities being looted and burned. Drugs became a part of life. Leaders were assassinated. Hippies left mainstream life and started communes in remote locations, only requiring the basics of life. Greed was not good. Money meant corruption. Working for a company just for the money was unacceptable. The Peace Corp was in and working on Wall Street was out.

 Distrust of people with wealth along with the distrust of the government and our involvement in Viet Nam became the rallying cry of the sixties. Going to work just to make money was unacceptable. No one could get a handle on why we were in Viet Nam. Working for the CIA was a way to find out about Viet Nam. The main thing I found out about Viet Nam was that you couldn’t trust intelligence. In many instances there double spies going back and forth between North and South Viet Nam. There was no internal commitment to the cause of freedom, just the highest bidder. The CIA initially provided me with a military deferment. Later I became part of the draft lottery and luckily drew a high number and was never drafted.

Applicant information from the CIA stated:

1. In accordance with its special national responsibilities, the Central Intelligence Agency is obliged to judge carefully the suitability of each person selected for employment in the agency. To assist in this determination, an extensive investigation, which includes a polygraph interview, is conducted with regard to the loyalty, background, and character of applicants under consideration for employment with the Agency. This investigation includes, but is not limited to, inquiries concerning:

a.       professional competence

b.       any behavior, activities or associations which tend to show that the individual is of questionable   

       Character, discretion, integrity or trustworthiness.

c.        Any deliberate misrepresentations, falsifications, or omission of material facts.

d.       any criminal, infamous, dishonest, immoral, or notoriously disgraceful conduct, habitual use of  

       Intoxicants to excess, drug addiction, or sexual perversion

e.        physical fitness

f.        An adjudication of insanity, serious mental illnesses, neurological disorders, or emotional instability

g.       any facts which furnish reason to believe that the individual may be subjected to coercion, 

       Influence or pressure which may cause him to act contrary to the best interests of the national   

       Security

h.       commission of any act of sabotage, espionage, treason, or sedition, or attempts threat or preparation therefore, or conspiring with, or aiding or abetting, another to commit or attempt to   

       Commit any act of sabotage, espionage, treason, or sedition

i.         establishing or continuing a sympathetic association with a saboteur, spy, traitor, seditionist, anarchist, or revolutionist, or with an espionage or other secret agent or representative of a foreign nation, or any representative of a foreign nation whose interests may be inimical to the interests of the United States, or with any person who advocates the use of force or violence to overthrow the government of the United States by unconstitutional means

j.         advocacy of use of force or violence to overthrow the government of the United States, or of the alteration of the form of government of the United States by unconstitutional means

k.       membership in, or affiliation or sympathetic association with, any foreign or domestic organization, movement, group, or combination of persons which is totalitarian, Fascist, Communist, or subversive, or which has adopted, or shows, a policy of advocating or approving the commission of acts of force or violence to deny other persons their rights under the form of government of the United States by unconstitutional means

l.         intentional, unauthorized disclosure to any person of security information, or of other information, disclosure of which is prohibited by law, or willful violation or disregard of security regulations

m.     Performing or attempting to perform his duties, or otherwise acting, so as to serve the interests   of another government in preference to the interests of the United States

Working at the agency and living in Washington, DC during the sixties was a life changing experience. I learned a lot about international cultures, how to work in a bureaucracy, that northern bigotry was surprisingly just as bad as southern bigotry, techniques to gather information, dealing with the need to know, and how to survive bureaucrats. Important lessons that later saved my business and helped it eventually sell for over a million dollars.

1968 will go down as one of the worst years of the last century. I tell people that living in DC during that year were the equivalent of 10 years of the worst things you could imagine happening, compressed into a year. There was national distrust of the government about Vietnam with frequent protests at the Pentagon and the Washington Mall. The assassination of Martin Luther King in April with the riots and burning in D.C. There was the assassination and burial of Robert Kennedy in June. I can remember how eerie it was driving down to DC and watching the hearse driving from the train station to Arlington Cemetery. It was nearly dark when the train arrived and there was some urgency in having the burial before it was totally dark.

The funeral was on Saturday, June 9^th, 1968. The Washington Post reported that, “Robert Francis Kennedy was laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery last night, close to the grave of the brother who also died of an assassin’s bullet.

The graveside service began nearly five hours behind schedule under dark and occasionally drizzly skies as a June thunderstorm threatened to break across the grassy slopes.

Then there was the Poor People's March with tents in the mud on the Washington Mall. .

Security and sleeping with the enemy - Getting a job at the agency required a thorough background check in order to be accepted for employment. Above and beyond the technical qualifications were the psychological tests and polygraphs. Mainly there was an effort to determine stability along with being heterosexual and no history of any drug use. I’m not sure that all those tests are legal and are being used today. Character weaknesses were the easiest way to compromise security. Both the enemy and the good guys used those techniques. Money, drugs, and women were the most likely way to get information through extortion or blackmail. Look for leaders near the top and exploit their weaknesses.  I found that intelligence gathering was done much different than James Bond. Where he would go into a country and gather information independently and stay away from all the sleazy spy methods I was hearing about at the agency. Well maybe James Bond did do a few sleazy things they were just portrayed as glamorous. Anyway I was given a card with a telephone number and told to call them if I ever got into any trouble. The government hated negative publicity. One thing I filed back for later use. Politicians and people working for the government don’t mind spending money they just can’t stand negative press.

Find a weakness in a competitor and use it to win business. Maintain a personal dossier and companies profile and use it. What a country!

Bureaucracy was a way to find someone else to blame if things didn’t go well. You could always find a scapegoat if you could write a good memo and did it first with conviction. The bigger the bureaucracy the more likely your competition comes from within your organization and not the enemy outside. That was true in business and government. Today our biggest battles are being fought from within and not from without.

Security created a double-edged sword for bureaucrats. The necessity to maintain backup people for continuity and at the same time not letting people know what you were doing whom didn’t have a “need to know”. It might appear that once you started working for the agency you had a job for life. There were circumstances where you could lose your job. Three security violations and you were out also I remember a Jewish employee losing his job for failing to do his job. He was highly qualified, going through Brooklyn Tech prep school, but did not work well with others. I recall a lot of sensitivity to his removal, being Jewish and all.

My job was working on foreign missile tracking that primarily involved Soviet SS9 and SS11’s. We got tracking data and determined capabilities as well as potential US targets from their tests.

I learned to be aggressive and proactive on project management from Kevin Mulcahy. Kevin was a Bostonian whose father worked for the agency.  Kevin was front-page news and he was even discussed on the Larry King show on CNN.

George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography --- by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin

During 1976, Ed Wilson, officially retired, had been working with CIA officials on a project to deliver explosives, timers, weapons, and ultimately Redeye missiles to Qaddafi of Libya. Wilson was receiving assistance from active duty CIA agents, including William Weisenburger and from Scientific Communications, a CIA front company. Wilson was working with Clines, who was still on the CIA payroll. CIA man Kevin Mulcahy had reported to Theodore Shackley about Wilson's activities, and Shackley had informed deputy director William Wells, who in turned had passed the hot potato on to Inspector General John Waller. The result of this round was a probe of Mulcahy's report under Thomas Cox of Wallers' staff, assisted by Thomas Clines, of all people. On the basis of this in-house investigation, Bush on September 17 decided to pass the entire case on to the FBI.

The Associated Press reported October 28, 1982, the following:

Washington – A medical examiner found Wednesday that one-time CIA analyst Kevin Mulcahy, a key witness against former agents who allegedly worked for Libya, had bronchial pneumonia and advanced emphysema when he died outside a rural Virginia motel cabin, a state official and a family member said.

The examiner did not immediately assign a cause of death however.

Mulcahy, 40, who tipped federal authorities to ex-CIA agent Edwin P. Wilson’s alleged aid to Libyan strongman Moammar Khadafy, was found Tuesday morning slumped against the locked door to his cabin in the remote village of Bowman’s Crossing, Va., about 90 miles west of Washington.

Federal prosecutors and the FBI were closely monitoring the case to see if the death was in any way related to their investigation of Wilson and other former CIA officials linked to the Libyan operation.

Dr. James C. Beyer, Fairfax County medical examiner, said he found no visible wounds or signs of trauma during the autopsy and said the “cause and manner of death was pending” results from laboratory tests including ones for possible poisons.

…………….

Mulcahy’s brother, Brian, and Commonwealth’s Attorney William H. Logan Jr. said Beyer found the former CIA analyst was suffering from several serious lung ailments: bronchitis, bronchial pneumonia and advanced emphysema.

Brian Mulcahy said Beyer also found a “relatively low” blood alcohol count of 0.11. At that, he would have been counted drunk under Virginia’s highway laws, which fix the level of intoxication at 0.10.

…………..

Logan said David Stalker, owner of the Mountain View Motel Court, reported that Mulcahy checked out of his cabin on Monday, leaving a forwarding address for a refund on his payment of $200 for a planned month’s stay. Mulcahy had arrived at the motel five days earlier on Oct. 20.

Stalker had asked Mulcahy to leave the motel after Mulcahy apparently had fired a shotgun blast which damaged the cabin’s front door, two windows and a curtain on Sunday morning, according to Logan. It was not clear why Mulcahy fired the shotgun.

Stalker helped Mulcahy load his possessions into his pickup truck Monday afternoon and Mulcahy turned over the keys to the cabin, Logan said. According to another motel resident, Mulcahy sat in the truck for several hours and then climbed out apparently to look for Stalker. Stalker, however, told authorities he had left the motel by 5:30 p.m.

Logan said the keys to Mulcahy’s truck were later found on the bed inside the locked cabin. No one has come forward to say the saw Mulcahy drive away.

Mulcahy’s body was found 8:05 a.m. Tuesday morning slumped against the cabin floor.

 Kevin had turned someone in to authorities for selling military equipment to Libya. He was found dead in the Shenandoah Mountains. He had a history of alcoholism and he was a heavy smoker, so foul play was ruled out after a lengthy investigation. While at the agency Kevin was the guy that I worked with the most. We worked on a project in FMSAC, the department that does foreign missile space analysis, reason for the acronym. I was on assignment from the Office of Computer Services. At that time we were working with an outside contractor, TRW, to enhance software, by adding double precision, to track Russian SS9 and SS11 missiles. We generally referred to TRW as TR Who. We were improving the ability to accurately track foreign missiles, primarily Soviet at that time.  We would get tracking data on the Russian tests and attempt to determine range and capabilities. Also we were involved in tracking foreign satellites and the intelligence they were capable of gathering based on the paths that they crossed the US. Even at that time photography from the earth was much more detailed than anyone ever assumed. Hard to believe the Agency misidentified the Chinese Embassy during the war in Yugoslavia. I am glad I wasn’t in China when that happened. If they had made my CIA background connection, I would probably still be there.

Kevin Mulcahy taught me that in order to get priority on your project you must be aggressive, not passive. Kevin appeared to have multiple personalities, very charming at one stage and very angry and mean at another when he failed to get what he wanted. That type of personality was the type of individual I generally partnered with in high school, in life, and in business. I was looked at as the methodical planner and my partner was the one who expressed an aggressive, outgoing, even sometimes obnoxious personality in order to take action on the plan. Back in the days of the big mainframe computer you could submit a job and generally get it back the next day. Kevin used his father’s influence to get block time where you had complete access to a computer and you could run your jobs and tests numerous times. If block time were not available at Langley, then Kevin would get time at the agency’s offices in Roslyn, across the bridge from D.C. One time when we were returning from Roslyn it was raining and in order to keep the disk drives from getting wet Kevin told me to pull my car into the underground parking below the agency. We weren’t authorized but we were able to unload before the guard ran us out. We had to do some fast-talking to avoid a security violation. Many times when doing government work it’s best to ask for forgiveness instead of permission. Obviously if the person you are asking forgiveness from is wearing a gun you may want to reconsider. A good thought when dealing with large bureaucratic organizations. Know where the power is! Kevin and I were complete opposites but as a team we were successful in completing our projects. How many SS-9’s or SS-11’s do you know that have hit the US mainland?

Honor among thieves—Appeared there was known spies as long as there was nothing happening they were left along. Praising your enemy can get Lot’s of information. I have since some of those techniques while in Mainland China making business presentations and selling systems in Russia.

We always heard about unusual spy devices. One of the more unusual was a listening device implanted in an animal ear. Can you imagine a dog or cat trained to walk around a crowd and the device picking up conversations? And this was over thirty years ago.

After leaving the agency I worked for a few years with oil companies in Lake Charles, Louisiana and in Ashland, Kentucky. Moving to Lake Charles was a mistake which I corrected by leaving after only 6 months on the job. My work there included process control of the offshore gas wells. Monitoring and controlling was becoming more automated with the entire hurricane related interruptions. The only exciting thing about the work was flying out in a helicopter to a platform. I was amazed how small those platforms appear from the air. Our son was born in Lake Charles in August and we left shortly thereafter. Don’t ever stay with a job you hate. Admit the mistake and move on.  My son was born there. I always remind him that he was born in the year that man landed on the moon and Woodstock. Five years after his mother and I were married. When he decided to become a lawyer, I told him some might question his birthright and legitimacy.

Ashland Oil was an interesting company. They were called the exception. They made their money from refining and marketing oil, not from production. They were, in effect, lousy at finding oil. I helped develop a least cost supply and distribution model saving the company an estimated $5 million a year. Remember how modern math had been trashed. Well I was actually using matrix algebra to solve business problems. It helped determine the best place to swap oil with other companies. A way of using technology to horse trade petroleum products in order to get it to the service stations in locations remote to their refineries. Oil companies and the government were virtually the only places with computers and the resources to give on the job training. Not a bad idea to initially work for leaders in the industry or type of work that interests you.  Another side benefit was my opportunity to work in the Department of Planning and Analysis. I learned a lot about how deals were structured for acquisitions. Something I had to deal with, when I sold my company. They bought and sold businesses much like my dad bought and sold TVs and appliances.

President Nixon came to Ashland, October 26^th, 1972, and spoke at the local high school gym. I got tickets and attended. I remember Nixon’s shoulders being slumped over and the gym being warm. That’s about all. Tickets were very hard to get unless you worked for Ashland Oil. Nixon had done very limited campaigning. Due to the time he was spending with Viet Nam and the fact that he was so far ahead of McGovern in the polls. Watergate was starting to have rumblings in the media. But no one thought Nixon could be that stupid and arrogant in a race he was winning with virtually no effort. It also marked the first presidential visit to Ashland since Harry Truman had visited 24 years previously.

Ashland Oil President was later connected to some illegal contributions to the Nixon campaign fortunately that was something I knew nothing about at the time. I’m sure with the CIA background there was speculation that I had been involved. Most people have the idea that once you work for the agency you never leave.